Familial Wounds, details

Here are a couple of detail shots from my recent work, Familial Wounds.

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Familial Wounds, detail

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Familial Wounds, detail

Familial Wounds

This photo is a better quality than the one I posted yesterday (at right). It was taken outside in morning light. Although I adjusted it to warm up the natural coolness of the light, it still looks a bit cool. I think part of it is that it has a little more reflection going on, which does help bring out some of the texture.

I prefer the photo in studio lighting, probably because this is closest to what I see when I look at it. But the above photo is sharper and shows more detail.

Lighting can be quite vexing for an amateur such as myself.

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Familial Wounds, studio lighting

About Familial Wounds

I think of familial wounds as being the psycho-emotional wounds that occur in our upbringing, especially through neglect and abuse. Another dimension to these wounds is that they are often ancestral, going back some number of generations. Until one is able to recognize an unhealthy family dynamic, well… it’s just your family and you have no frame of reference from which to have any judgement on it. It’s just how things are. Ignorance obscures your vision. Until an unhealthy family dynamic is recognized, it continues to be perpetuated. At the moment when there is recognition that things are not healthy—not good—a choice can be made.

By some magical confluence of happenings, I was able to recognize my own family’s very unhealthy and destructive dynamic, which began my escape from that dynamic, that worldview. While the word escape is fitting, it is also somewhat lacking because, although I escaped it, it has never left me.

My choice to follow a very different path and develop a very different worldview—a different way of seeing the world and my relationship to it—was the right choice, but it was not easy. I became an outsider in my own family, and as time went on and I continued on my path, it became more and more difficult to maintain a relationship with my parents and siblings. They could only interpret my behavior and choices through the lens of their worldview, the worldview that I was rejecting.

My family did not see an unhealthy dynamic, nor could my parents see the unhealthy dynamic in their own childhoods. So, through ignorance, it was perpetuated. The wounds live on, and are passed on, like DNA. Some wounds are like open wounds, being aggravated by all the things outside of us. Some wounds are just embedded in our tissue, recognized and healed, but they leave their mark. They change us, and in that sense they never leave.

This mosaic came out of my own experience and ruminations on familial wounds. As I was working on it, I began realizing that although I have succeeded in escaping that damaging worldview, and I have succeeded in developing what I believe is a healthy and good worldview, I can feel that old dynamic as viscerally as if I were still a part of it. I am not a part of it, but it is part of me.

So, the dimensional rings in the mosaic represent recent, open, and/or festering wounds. The embedded rings represent wounds that have healed and only their imprint remains. The gold lines represent energy: this could be seen as our body’s natural healing energy, as divine energy—grace, or just consciousness. To me, they are all of those. Of course, the color is meant to suggest tissue, raw emotional tissue. The gradation from dark to light represents hope. The dark swoops from top and bottom—defined by absence of material and connected to the outside border—can be interpreted as darkness, or the perils of the outside world. At one point, I thought of them as the daggers of life. The mosaic as a whole speaks to the healing process—we can recognize our wounds, make different choices, and heal. However, the wounds leave their mark, a testament to change and growth that helps define who we become.

Though the initial concept was of emotional wounds, it evolved toward what is for me the more potent issue of familial wounds. And I can’t say that I had even thought of it in those terms before. The work helped me more fully understand that it is familial wounds that have left their mark on me, and led me to the life I live. Bless those beautiful wounds!

New Work Preview: Familial Wounds

I’m calling this a preview because this is not a final photo. I have not finished out the back or framed it, and it needs a final cleaning. I took the phot in my studio and the lighting is uneven. It is rather large and I will need to try to get better photos outside. Unfortunately, our weather has been pretty drippy and dreary of late and it is raining as I write this. It is, however, supposed to be sunny for the next couple of days.

I started this mosaic last March (it was formerly titled Self Portrait № 2) but got distracted with a commission and then a couple of voluntary mosaic detours. I got back to work on this in September and have worked earnestly to complete it since then. It has been quite a process and a journey as well.

This mosaic became more and more personal and tormenting to me as I progressed. I suppose that makes sense. It was rather odd to me that the work became more and more strenuous until, in the final weeks, I was overwhelmed with how technically difficult it was: the sheer labor of it was walloping me.

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It was technically difficult from the beginning. Creating the curves against empty space, and also the embedded rings defined by empty space, while maintaining the horizontal and vertical grid-like field, was extremely challenging. But it was only as the work became more personal, and shifted in concept from wounds to familial wounds, that it became more and more physically challenging.

At the same time, I have been trying to work more loosely and leave my perfectionism behind, in hopes of exploring artistic vision over technical mastery. I chose not to use a grinder and relied on hand tools only. There is nothing wrong with a grinder, but I find it encourages my obsessive perfectionism. And obsessive perfectionism is really miserable.

I’ll write more about it as I post final photos.

Excellent European Adventure

Here’s a slideshow of my best photos from our time in Europe in September.

Sold x 4

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Rhythms: July (2008) 8” x 8” | 20cm x 20cm. Sodalite, granite, smalti, piastrina, shell, lapis, glass, Swarovski crystals.

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Rhythms: October (2008) 8” x 8” | 20cm x 20cm. Marble, travertine, onyx, porcelain, vitreous, carnelian, chrysoprase, piastrina, other glass, seed beads.

I was very happy to have sold a few mosaics at the Bandon Library’s 4th Annual Mosaic Show in June, in Bandon, OR. The two pieces, above from my Rhythms series found new homes, as well as the two minis below.

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These were two of six little mosaics I did as part of the 2008 MAO Monthly Challenge. Their titles reflect the theme of the challenge.

Memoryware 3” x 2” | 8cm x 5cm. Broken Spode, costume jewelry, glass beads.

Architecture 3” x 2” | 8cm x 5cm. Onyx, hematite, shell, glass, Swarovski crystals.

Paths Taken

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Paths Taken, alternate view

Finished! There are still a couple of areas where I’m not sure how the navigation should be handled, if indeed there is a should to be known, but I’m resisting the temptation to tinker with it further. I’m sure there are a few different ways in which it could be handled, and I’m hoping that I’ve landed on one of them.

I’m mostly happy with it, and I enjoyed the entire process. My work in Procreate was very beneficial and I look forward to using it on my next project, which I will get to after I finish a large one that is already in progress.

I have now finished 3 unfinished mosaics in the past 2-3 years, ones that sat waiting for years, the longest wait being over 15 years. It feels good to finish things on which I had previously given up. I’ve still got 2 more unfinished mosaics from years past, but I’m going to move on to a few new works first.

Paths Taken, Part 11

Just a brief video on finishing the edges.

Paths Taken, Part 10

In this video, I talk about various aspects of the smalti execution and finishing.

Paths Taken, in progress

I'm in the finishing phase now.

Green is such a glorious color! I've always been pretty neutral when it comes to green, but I thoroughly enjoyed working with these gorgeous greens. They completely captivated me.

I will be making a few minor corrections—of course—including finding a place for my initials—I just forgot. This has been a challenging and very rewarding project. I'll be posting a video, Part 10, tomorrow or Friday and will talk more about it. 

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Framing Mosaics: Vexed by Wedi?

In the above video, I'll share a few things I know about framing mosaics, and how I have found to deal with challenging substrates like Wedi Board.

Iskandria: Video Tour

What is this little mosaic all about? I'll tell you about it in the above video.

Paths Taken: Palette and Procreate

Previous posts on this project.

 Continuing where I left off, I talk about my palette and how I am using the Procreate app in my design process.

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By importing an image of my proposed palette (at left) into Procreate, I was able to create swatches that I could use to refine my palette and play with design ideas around color and shading. 

Paths Taken, Part 7

Good progress in the past few days! I got to the point where I was really enjoying working on my drawing of andamento lines and working out how I needed to navigate the flaring and some of the trickier intersections and diversions of flow.

In this video, I will discuss how I got to this point and some of issues that came up.  

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At left is my drawing as of this video. There are a couple of areas that I will be tweaking, and I talk about those in the video. Right now, I feel it is about 99% there.

I'm very happy with the flow and the overall size of the pieces, especially the shape and placement of the larger pieces which will be cut from smalti B-cuts and pizzas.

Next, I'll finalize my palette and how I want to work with the shades and values that I have. 

Storyteller: Video Tour

The above video takes a closer look at my mosaic Storyteller. 

Paths Taken: Yet More on Andamento

In this video, I'm discussing some of my challenges in working out how to express the flow that I would like to express.

Paths Taken: More on Andamento

After reflecting on my previous discussion about andamento, I wanted to talk about it a little more and clarify my understanding of the term. 

To summarize:

1. The English translation of andamento is a/the trend. Mosaically, I understand andamento to be the way things go, the movement, or more specifically, the sense of movement.
2. There are multiple ways to express the chosen andamento for a mosaic, including cutting and laying techniques—different opuses, and material and color choices.

In the above video, I talk about andamento as it relates to my current project, and I offer a couple of examples of different andamenti and the techniques chosen to express those andamenti.

Anatomy of a Mosaic: Paths Taken

I started this mosaic about 4 years ago, but retreated from it as I was heading into a sabbatical of sorts. I had decided that I did not like the pattern of the pieces of shale that I had adhered to the substrate. I thought that, at some point in the future, I would remove the pieces or just throw it away. 

Now, 4 years later, I think it will make a great andamento challenge for me. I've decided to finish it, and to take you along with me as I go. 

I'm calling it Paths Taken, and I will blog the making of it, starting with this post. I'm not very good at making videos, but what the heck! I think even a so-so video can help explain things and be a useful accompaniment to photos and text. So, here goes!

The first thing I needed to do was to make a support frame for the back of the mosaic. Adding a support frame allows for more flexibility in hanging and framing decoratively, and takes care of the problem that Wedi creates in making such choices. With a support frame on the back, the mosaic can be decoratively framed or not, and hanging hardware can be installed on this back support frame.

I used 8 Kerdi washers, which are similar to Wedi washers, to properly bolt the support frame to the back of the Wedi board.

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Let's just talk a bit about the materials:

Back when I started this mosaic, I printed images of it in which I whited-out the bare substrate so that I could play around with the andamento. Fortunately, I kept a couple of my attempts and I recently found them:

I'll take some time now to revisit and complete my andamento drawing, and I'll be back with you when it's ready to go!